


A School Crush

by cheshireArcher



Category: Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare
Genre: F/M, Stuttering Harry, obligatory high school au, trying to ask out on a date, very awkward teenage wooing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 14:45:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7536877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheshireArcher/pseuds/cheshireArcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Percy is an awkward sixteen-year-old and has a crush on Kate Mortimer. He deals with this fact in the most Harry Percy ways possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A School Crush

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nodeadhotspurjokes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nodeadhotspurjokes/gifts).



> Written for my good friend Zed (tumblr user noddingviolet) for their birthday! They requested a story about Hotspur awkwardly trying to woo Kate, maybe in high school, so here it is! Hope you enjoy it!

Harry Percy was, at sixteen, the most awkward kid in Kate’s history class. He was short, with bandy legs, white-blond hair, and braces. Add that to being terminally overstimulated and having a bad temper and a stutter, he was an absolute mess of a high schooler. And he had the most heart-strangling crush on Kate Mortimer, the sister of his best friend Edmund.

Kate was one of the best students in their class. Originally from Wales, she was studious, patient, and very sharp. Harry was not too bright, always angry about something, and incredibly obnoxious.

So of course Kate liked him.

She didn’t tell him that, though.

Harry knew he wanted to ask Kate out but he was terrible at it. He tried everything.

The first attempt was a poem, stuffed in her locker, which was not far from his.

_Roses are red_  
_Violets are blue_  
_I hate poems_  
_But I don’t hate you_

Kate just stared at the vaguely poem-sounding thing, then she looked up in Harry’s direction with a look of confusion.

Apparently that hadn’t worked.

The second attempt was when they were in the school library for a research project that day. Harry scribbled notes saying things like “Can you help me” and he tossed them at her.

That earned him a wadded up paper in return, which had, in perfect penmanship, “Stop annoying me you jerk.”

That didn’t discourage Harry from his attempts to get Kate to pay attention to him. He tried to get made her partner for projects, he tried sitting near her at lunch, he even asked Edmund, how to get her to like him. Edmund had just laughed for two minutes straight and said “You’re going about it the wrong way.”

Harry couldn’t take it anymore. He’d tried everything to get Kate Mortimer’s attention over the school year, but now everything was coming down to the wire: the big dance was coming up. Harry didn’t even want to go to the dance, he just wanted to be with Kate. Perfect Kate, tall with long braided hair and a sweet round face with the most piercing eyes he’d ever seen… he was beginning to feel sappy and he hated that- but he couldn’t help imagining kissing her or holding her hand.

He was so desperate the week before the dance that he nearly asked Hal Bolingbroke for advice. He saw Hal goofing off in the cafeteria with his best friend Ned and their friend Doll facepalming violently and Harry decided he wasn’t THAT desperate.

He again tried the indirect method. He knew girls liked flowers so he dug some out of his mother’s flowerbed and stuffed them in Kate’s locker. She didn’t notice them until she opened her locker and they fell on the floor. She looked up but didn’t see Harry because he’d ducked behind a recycling bin.

Harry was beginning to think he was looking like a coward and that was the last thing he wanted, so he decided to be brave. He summed up his courage and marched over to Kate, who was at her dang useless locker once again.

“Hi Kate,” Harry said.

“Hello, Harry,” Kate replied.

“Do you w-want to go to the dance w-with me?” He asked.

Kate stared at him. The silence seemed to lengthen the distance between them in the hallway. “You want to go to the dance?” She asked.

“Only w-with you,” Harry replied, turning on the bluntness that usually got him detention.

Kate stares at Harry- dang was he cute. Stupid but cute, and she’d liked him for a while now even though she had no idea why. And the lengths he’d been going to to get her to go out with him… were rather endearing.

“Sure,” she replied. She watched his face twist as he opened his mouth to say something but then shut it. For the first time in his life, Harry Percy had nothing to say.

“You mean it?” He finally got out. “You really mean it?”

“Yes, Harry,” Kate replied, giving him the sweetest, most beautiful smile he’d ever received.

He jumped up, whooping. “I’ll pick you up at seven then! Just three more days!” He ran off to tell Edmund that he’d successfully asked Kate out, and to celebrate his good fortune.

Kate sighed, leaning against her locker. As Harry ran off like the human perpetual motion machine he was, she began thinking about what dress she should wear.

She wanted it to be the same shade of blue as his beautiful eyes.


End file.
